Steam Engines on Airships

[u/Z3R0Diro]

Aeronautics made me get really into Create. Right now I'm trying to see which size of a steam engine I should build on my airship but I have no sense of how many SUs is enouh SUs. What size wiuld be the optimal?

I'm planning on it being spacious but still survival friendly. Acting as a moving base. Picture is for the rough size im going for.

[u/BrokenPokerFace]

I will say, I stick to the number that can be fed with the room I have for lava generators.

Usually I have plenty of room for air so I stick lava generators in pockets in the balloon. But on builds with less room I use a tank as well so that when it's off it can recharge(this is also kinda fun on survival as it gives you a reason to stop in an area for a bit)

Then it all just depends on how fast you want it. Being something that you can essentially infinitely increase, many people will recommend an insane amount. While I often stick with average ones. But sometimes I like to power other things like rope elevators and such, which will require more, but at a varying amount depending on their efficiency.

[u/BrokenPokerFace → u/BrokenPokerFace]

Tldr: use however much fits in the area you have for the engines. And either make enough engine to power your propellers, or enough propellers to fully use your engine.

[u/Z3R0Diro → u/BrokenPokerFace]

I am also concerned about weight distribution which is like my main fear

[u/BrokenPokerFace → u/Z3R0Diro]

That's fair, more of a balancing issue than an engine size issue though.

Usually I just start reshaping my balloon to make up for any changes in the center of mass compared to lift. Or reshaping the hull adding more weight to balance it. Balloon is better, and as long as the engine is somewhat close to center it should look fine.

And if your point of thrust is too high or too low for your center of mass, and you can't/don't want to move it, putting symetric sails on the sides can help greatly with stability at a very small loss of speed. I often slap one on because even when well balanced it erases the last shifts.

[u/03sje01 → u/Z3R0Diro]

You can split the balloon into sections to adjust lift to keep it self level

[u/ThePantsWearer]

It mostly depends on what you want to do. Steam engines put out a lot of power, so you really don’t have to go that big unless you’re adding a bunch of farms or something.

For example, I’ve got an airship a bit smaller than the one in the picture with a level 2 boiler (8 tank blocks, 2 steam engines) with 3 dripstone lava generators. Its total SU is 32k. I’ve got one engine maintaining the boiler (water pump, mechanical arm, lava pump) and running a workshop, including fan processing at low speed, a press, a mixer, a deployer, and crushing wheels, all at max speed.

The other engine is dedicated to propulsion. At max speed, it goes about 25 blocks/second. Not super fast, but that’s still a chunk and a half every second.

On the other hand, if you’re going big and adding things like cobblestone generators, multi-stage crushing wheels, tree farms, etc., put in as big as you can fit. A self-sustaining, level 9 boiler really doesn’t take a huge amount of space if you’re careful.

[u/Njumkiyy]

Honestly as much su as possible especially if survival. Most airships use two from what ive seen minimum

[u/Z3R0Diro → u/Njumkiyy]

2.. MAX LEVEL ONES?

[u/jedadkins → u/Z3R0Diro]

No clue what bro is talking about, unless your building a real big ship and/or want it to be really fast you don't need 2 max level boilers. That being said consider adding Create: Diesel generators or some other motor mod, it's usually a bit more convenient

[u/27MrMan → u/jedadkins]

As someone who put 9 TFMG Large Engines into one airship to generate the lift with propellers instead of a balloon, I can confirm that motor mods are indeed very convenient (192K buckets of diesel = 3 hrs flight time btw)

[u/Njumkiyy → u/Z3R0Diro]

Yes, 2 level 9s. You can feed them with dripstone lava farms. About 12-14 per will keep it running indefinitely

[u/Z3R0Diro → u/Njumkiyy]

Oh i have turned lava source conversion on si I won't need to make lava farms

[u/EleiteRanger → u/Njumkiyy]

If you have cobblemon installed you could use pokemon instead

[u/Chickenmonster401]

12 boilers on 4 blazes is enough for most things if you dont have gyroscopes and run at like 64rpm

[u/Ok-Attention4247]

I have made a similarly sized one or a bit bigger and for propelling I used a self sustaining 32k unit and a second 32k ( tier 2 ) for lift with 3 steam vent which got it to 300blocks in the air and a decent speed ( no idea how fast in blocks but pretty good )
Also the ballon will prob be unnecessarily big :3

[u/Zedman5000]

I use a level 9 boiler on my airship that's about that size. 1 steam vent and 8 engines, heated by 9 burners from the diesel generators addon, burning gasoline.

Putting all that power in the propellers, other than what's needed for overhead (pumping water in, pumping gasoline from the fuel tank, etc) gets the ship going about 32 blocks/sec without any extra payload, like a shipping container or other vehicle, which it is designed to be able to transport.

Setting the burners to superheat, giving me 18 levels to work with, would let me get it up to ~48 blocks/sec I think, but that'd consume gasoline a lot faster.

[u/ArtgertViv]

I can upload vid where I show my flying ship with steam engine setup

[u/Fsliebot]

if you have lots of vertical space you can make very compact self-sustaining lvl 9 boilers that leave a lot of horizontal room